


Haunted by the Ghost of You

by RestlessWanderings



Category: Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
Genre: Angst, Crying, F/M, Ghosts, Heathcliff is so angsty, i figure someone on here likes Wuthering Heights fanfic, i literally wrote this for a college level course, so here you go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 11:30:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10830378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RestlessWanderings/pseuds/RestlessWanderings
Summary: Wrote this for my English 265 course. Tried to explain Heathcliff's reaction to seeing Catherine's ghost at the beginning of Emily Bronte's Withering Heights. Mostly an angst fest. Takes place somewhere between Catherine's death and Isabella's leaving. Mostly just wanted to explore how Heathcliff grieves when he's not full of Rage.





	Haunted by the Ghost of You

The fire is low. Too low, really, to keep anything but the immediate area of the fireplace warm. Heathcliff can feel the tendrils of heat reaching out to him, ready to be of service, but he doesn’t move. He blinks, staring into the embers. There’s no point in accepting it – he hasn’t felt warm in years. If he lets himself think too much on it he can almost remember the feeling of warmth but it’s better not to, better to let that feeling fade until it’s so distant a memory he can’t reach it.

Outside thunder booms, low and fierce, but there has yet to be any lightening, any rain. Distantly, he hears Joseph begin to scold Hareton for something or other. Before he can register what Joseph is blabbering on about it goes quiet. He taps his fingers on his knee to feel something. Nothing can overcome the numbness he feels. It crests over him like a wave and leaves his mind fuzzy, hands tingling.

The fire is low. Too low to beat away the darkness. Shadows swirl around him and he rests the palm of a hand to his chest, feeling his heart beat. There are times he wishes he could rip it out of his chest, times where he’s taken a knife to his skin and wondered if his thirst for revenge was worth living in this constant state of agony. His fingers clench into a fist and he presses his knuckles into his skin, imagining himself tearing away his clothing, his skin and his muscle and his bone until he is bloody broken bruised _dead_.

He laughs. The house itself seems to jump in surprise and his ears ring with the unexpected sound. _Where is your anger now?_ he wonders, staring into the embers. _Where is your rage?_

Rage is an old lover of his. Most times they are intertwined so intimately, so absolutely, that he cannot tell where he ends and his rage begins. It folds around him like a cloak, driving his actions, influencing him to the point where he can barely remember a time without the white heat of it burning a hole in his chest.

Heathcliff sighs. The chest. The heart. The fire. That’s what it all comes back to, three elements so integral to him, to life, that one cannot exist without the other. Who would he be without his rage? Without the blackened broken twisted _jagged_ shards of his heart and the scars they’ve left upon his soul?

 _And there it is,_ he thinks, one hand gripping the end of the armrest and the other his clothes, both white knuckled. _There it is. I cannot live without my life, my soul, and yet here I am._ Catherine is gone, he knows this; knows it like he knows he is irredeemable, like he knows when he dies he will never reach Heaven’s gates, like he knows Catherine is still here, watching him from the shadows. They shift in his peripherals and there are times on the moor, at dusk, the wind buffeting against him, that he can feel her hands across his skin.

It leaves him breathless shaking desperate drained hollow _powerless,_ something he swore he’d never feel again, not after those years he spent away from this place, away from _her,_ in a futile effort to better himself. He makes a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a keen. He had bettered himself, he’ll admit, but it was all for naught. For what use is there in revenge if Catherine is dead? What use is there for rage if Catherine isn’t here to match him wit for wit, blow for blow, hurt for hurt? What use is there in living without Catherine?

He sucks in a breath. _I’d rather her be with Edgar, alive and hale, than for her to be dead,_ he realizes, something hot and sharp jabbing at his heart. _I’d rather see her with that ignorant fool every day, hanging from his every word, worshipping him like some sort of god. Anything but this._

He almost laughs at his thoughts. Who is he trying to convince? He’d rather die than have to see Catherine degraded in such a way. Clenching and unclenching his fists to rid himself of the ache, he sighs, forcing the rigid line of his shoulders to relax. Muscles twinge in protest at the change. His eyes burn but they’re dry. There’s nothing left for him to expunge, nothing left he can give.

Around him the shadows flicker. He taps his fingers on his knees, suddenly jittery, unable to shake the feeling of her gaze on him. _It’s too quiet_ he thinks. He scowls. Stands. Begins to step towards the dark, feet like weights, the scuffing of his socks the only sound in the room. The edge of light is soft, subdued, blending into shadow like dusk into night. He breathes deeply, feeling his lungs expand, listening to the _whoosh_ the air makes as it goes past his lips. Her eyes are on him. The fire is low. There is nowhere he can go to escape this torment, this sorrow, this attachment.

Once, long ago, someone has warned him to be wary of his heart. He’d been told that he’d always be a wild thing, no matter how much learning he underwent, no matter how he strived to be something better. Before Catherine, before Wuthering Heights, he remembers someone telling him that wild things attract each other and to be wary of it.

The chuckle that escapes him feels like broken glass rubbing against the inside of his throat. “Oh, Catherine, how you’ve ruined me.”

The shadows shift. His legs are unsteady beneath him. Still, he doesn’t return to the chair by the fire. He wants to wake her ghost, wants to find her and keep her here with him somehow. Her room. He needs to go to her room. But his legs are dead beneath him, unwilling to carry him into the darkness. His hands become fists but there’s no white hot rage to be found. Just a cool, calm detachment.

The chair beckons. He can almost feel hands clasp his, tugging lightly, and he follows, collapsing back into the chair with a sigh. Rubs his chest, digging his knuckles in again. Gasping, wetter this time, eyes stinging. Thunder booms, closer now, but still no rain.

 _Is this what heartbreak feels like?_ he wonders. _Or is this something else, something less pure?_ He’s more inclined to believe it’s the latter, no matter how much he yearns for the former.

He doesn’t know how to love. It’s as simple as that. A creature such as him is nigh incapable of it, cannot fathom the depths of it, cannot wrap his mind around the complexity of it. He was never taught to love, never really shown it. And Catherine? He sneers at the embers. She had tried. Perhaps she had loved him, in her own way. But they were not made for such a thing as love, not the love that so many want. Rather it was twisted, like the few trees on the moors, bent and warped until it may not even be love at all.

Something in him cracks and he yells, lashing an arm out as if to hit someone. “You left me!” he cries, baring his teeth. “What right did you have to leave me for him, when you knew you loved me? Perverted as it may have been, how could you deny me?”

He puts his head in his hands, he elbows on his knees, and curses. He _hurts_. It feels as if someone has taken his essence and ripped it from him, leaving him hollow. Empty. Devoid. And he knows that it’s Catherine that’s done this, Catherine in her heartbreak ripping out his. No longer is he the one handing her his heart and being slighted; no, she had taken it, allowed his blood to stain her fingertips before tearing it apart.

His breath hitches. His throat burns. “You left me,” he whispers. “Left me to bleed and fester in this horrid abyss. Tell me, what am I supposed to do? Tell me Catherine.”

Hugging himself, he lets the tears fall. Her presence is still there, everywhere, wrapping around him like a blanket.  “Take me back,” he pleads, “to when we were children, to when we first met. Let me tell my younger self our story. Let me –”

He can’t speak around the lump in his throat. His younger self would not listen, not even if he knew the hollow agony that awaited. Still he would chase after her, always her, no matter the harm caused to himself or others.

Her presence is still wrapped around him and anger flairs up in him, thick and slow burning. “Get away from me!” he shouts, throwing his arms out. “Leave me like you’ve left me before! Cease this haunting, cease this torment! If you ever loved me Catherine, you will abandon me to my hell.”

Cheeks wet with tears, heart aching, eyes red-rimmed and wide. He stands and turns to the chair, his back to the embers. “You were mine! And then you mostly were, and then you weren’t! And now? I cannot see you, cannot hear you, cannot touch you. All I can do is sense you and it is hell, darling, a hell worse than anything I’ve ever felt.” All at once the anger leaves him and his legs shake. He has to lock his knees to remain upright. “Please, just go.”

Her presence lingers, and he can just feel fingertips trailing down the side of his face. He leans into the non-touch and a moment later she is gone. Thunder rumbles and lightening flashes, lighting up the room for a moment. Somehow this is worse, like a blow to the gut.

A soundless cry makes its way past his clogged throat. His face crumples. The floor is hard on his knees and he hunches into himself, desperate to hold himself together, knowing that one wrong move and he’ll shatter.

 _Come back,_ he thinks, _come back come back come back!_

The fire is low. Too low to keep anything warm. The embers flicker out one by one, and he falls into darkness.


End file.
